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Thank God these teens aren't athletes

A message arrived from my old friend Terry Collins this week and, in it, he raised rather an awkward question.

"I don't know what you were doing at 17, Jim," he said, by way of referring me to the accomplishments of some astonishing young scientists from across the country who are at or near that age now.

Well, if you must know, that period did involve what might be considered experiments of a sort – even if they chiefly involved the formulas of Jack Kerouac, sweaty-palmed missions to the Brewers Retail and underage field trips to the old Warwick Hotel to attend quite remarkable seminars given by an entertainer who, if memory serves, was known as Hot Tamale.

But the least said about those days the better.

It is, Collins reminded me, the science fair season in Canada. And if you are thinking clay volcanoes and dry ice, he said, think again.

The projects some high-school students are involved in these days, he said, are "jaw-dropping in their sophistication and complexity." And none of us who operate most of the time from the unscientific side of the brain will ever say otherwise.

Today, at the Biotech Challenge in Ottawa, a panel of experts will be judging the top high-school projects in biotechnology across Canada. Tomorrow, the winners – including a prize for the project with the most commercial potential – will be announced at the National Research Council.

The 13 winners of regional competitions who are in the running are, it seems, the Sidney Crosbys of the teen science world, wunderkind mature and talented beyond their years, working at levels the rest of us can hardly fathom.

The kids carried out projects of their own design, advancing scientific knowledge about a commercial or human health problem, working with a mentor in their community who provides expert advice and access to equipment and supplies.

This year, the finalists have created insight (we aged and ailing baby boomers pass along deepest thanks) into diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and cancer.

They have also successfully investigated problems (courtesy of the brainpower of Maritimers among them) in the potato and mussel industries.

Meet Aaron Hakim, 15, a Grade 10 student at Appleby College in Oakville, who found, through his painstaking DNA work with fruit flies genetically engineered to mimic Parkinson's, a gene involved in the disease.

It was, needless to say, no easy job. He had trouble at first, he said, generating enough flies. Then he lost one-third of his population during a purifying process.

"Nothing works the first time in science research."

And how proud must be the parents of siblings Mustafa and Hazal Babadagli, a brother and sister team from Edmonton who have shown that an extract from bay leaves – a common herb – can slow the growth of cancer cells.

Ted Paranjothy, 17, of Winnipeg, found that living the life of a scientist involved "late night (and sometimes overnight) experiments and sacrificing evenings, weekends and holidays."

But don't for a minute get the idea that these young geniuses failed to recognize one of the practical implications of their hard work.

As James McLeod, a 17-year-old Grade 12 student from Ottawa, observed, he will have a huge head start on university lab courses next year since they'll initially be "less complex than the level of research" he's doing now.

In many cases, the motivation for the hard work and commitment was intensely personal.

Sixteen-year-old Christina Chiu of British Columbia has a grandmother with diabetes and was inspired to create genetically engineered cells that offer future treatment of the disease.

Sarai Hamodat, a 17-year-old student from St. John's, Nfld., who wants to become a doctor like his parents, wanted to do a project on asthma "because my uncle has a really severe asthma." He found a natural treatment to help asthmatics breathe more easily.

Victoria Bentley, 16, of Halifax, who was inspired by a beloved teacher who had died of ovarian cancer, found that the breast-cancer drug Tamoxifen could work in treating ovarian cancer.

May Li, a Grade 12 student from Calgary who provided the first-ever evidence that caffeine can reverse the neural damage caused by Alzheimer's, used to volunteer at a seniors' home and saw "how those affected by Alzheimer's and their families suffer and that's why I wanted to conduct research on this disease."

And how's this for recognizing not just the world under a microscope but the big picture?

"Science is a beautiful form of art no different from music, painting or sculpture," she said. "If one puts their passion into it, Mother Nature will let one peek quickly at her beauty."

As my friend Terry said, "if these kids were athletes ..."

Why, they'd be on the covers of magazines, profiled on the sports networks, their likely draft destination the subject of endless speculation, their ability to fill the shoes of The Great One, or Magnificent Mario, or Sid the Kid the obsession of a nation, their talent transformed into mountains of wealth and fame.

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